Rural Payments Agency - administrative error...?

Clive Cartwright

Posted 08 July 2009 - 03:53 AM

Clive Cartwright

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11 posts

Gender:Male

Location:Nottingham

United Kingdom

Hearing the news (U.K.) recently of an 'an administrative error' where some 900 farmers have been sent erroneous maps illustrating the parcels of land they own; does anyone know if this is a database error, or not?

What software do the Rural Payments Agency (RPA) use?

This clearly illustrates the power and influence maps hold on our society. But if, alas, it's over ownership of land, then I guess it would.

I've never heard so much news created over 'maps', before. I'd love to see an example of what they send out to people…

mika

Posted 08 July 2009 - 04:09 AM

mika

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122 posts

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Location:Warsaw

Poland

I believe the maps they send are sort of confidential, at least they were not meant for the public access a while ago.
I am not sure what software they use now but they used to have a customised web gis for maintaining the registration information.

I remember that quite often problems were caused by the inappropriate information supplied by the farmers - for example one could include a track in ones land while it actualy belongs to someone else.
The data are gathered by GIS operators and is prone to errors too. QA should have picked the errors anyway, but they're humans after all
The usual procedure with inaccurate land maps was to send them back with the corrections marked manually on the maps and a descriptions attached.

The other thing is that the 900 of 'bad' is a really nothing compared to the amount of the application the deal with. Not that I am taking the RPA's side but it does necessarily mean it's due to the system failure.